You’ll Never Find Happiness By Looking For It

Finding happiness is like finding that needle in a damn haystack. Chances are, you probably won’t find it by looking. Happiness isn’t an object that you can bury in your hands, keep on a shelf and treasure forever. Happiness is learned through lessons in life, failures, and what country you’re in and what family values you have. Happiness is different for everyone and measured in different ways. What makes you happy may not make the person next to you the slightest bit interested. And yet we crave it, like a spoonful of sugar on a plump red strawberry. We yearn for it in the deepest part of our souls as we watch out of the window, contemplating and forming thoughts like, “If this could happen that I’ll be…” Happy?

Because we thrive off the what if’s and we live off the uncertainty, although the uncertainty scares us and we self-destruct and go inside of ourselves. Then we fall into a loop. Relentless activities that serve us no pleasure, no satisfaction, and of course, no happiness. We get little blips of insight when something catches us off our guard, a spontaneous event occurs, a momentary flash that makes us feel as though nothing else in the world matters.

And yet most of us make happiness our life goal—we won’t feel complete until we have it. When asked by a stranger, “What do you want from life?” Happiness seems to be the most prominent answer above all else. What if I told you that every living being on the planet is looking for the same thing as you are? Because happiness doesn’t only come in the form of finding love, birthing a child, or finding a dream job. For many, this is the case. But so-called happiness can be found by taking a hit off a certain drug, fueling addictions to a compulsive disorder, or giving in to dangerous habits. Everyone, in some way or another, is looking for this token of happiness, but what people fail to realise is that their reasoning behind their desires or addictions is much deeper than that and they are not truly achieving that ‘happiness’ feeling.

Perhaps you do want to get married. It’s been your lifelong dream; you have scrapbooks of wedding dresses and Pinterest boards filled with wedding cake toppers and decorative ideas. Or maybe the pressure of fitting into society standards is what drives this idea, that happiness must mean marrying the one you love. Is life really that romantic?

Often, we think we know what makes us happy, but we get it wrong. I’m yet to know of anyone who takes drugs who does it for happiness, as opposed to filling an evident void in their lives.

You won’t find happiness by searching, and you probably won’t find it kicking back and letting it find you. Instead, be aware of the possibility that happiness can bring. Imagine. Let your thoughts run wild at the potential opportunities life could offer you. Daydream, manifest, whatever gets your blood pumping. Except for this time, just make sure you do something about it. Full happiness is only achieved when you look deeper inside yourself, and instead of saying, “I want to be happy,” say, “What can I do to be the happiest version of myself?” and the rest will follow.